Damascus is a beautiful city, but Assassin's Creed isn't a true representation of its current state.

A Danish television channel managed to mistake an Assassin's Creed screenshot for modern day Syria, and used it in a news broadcast. When social media channels began questioning its source material, head of news Jacob Nybroe swiftly apologised for the error.

The full piece, about the threat posed to Syria's cultural treasures by the ongoing violence in that country, can be seen over here. The screen's about 17 seconds in; apparently someone working for the channel, in need of a quick screen grab, used it without checking its origin. Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and can be very picturesque; but perhaps not quite that picturesque.

Nybroe described the incident as a terrible mistake, and "reminder to us all of the importance of verifying the sources of pictures."

Slow news today eh?At least he got the location right, and I don't want my fantasy to be broken,I'd like to imagine that you can still find something similar in today's Damascus,even if "a bit" more colorful ^_^

This kinda reminds me of that one time, I think it was Fox news or BBC, where they thought a video from ARMA II was from an actual soldier's helmet cam. That shit was funny. Like the others said though, this shit's easy to verify.

an annoyed writer:This kinda reminds me of that one time, I think it was Fox news or BBC, where they thought a video from ARMA II was from an actual soldier's helmet cam. That shit was funny. Like the others said though, this shit's easy to verify.

an annoyed writer:This kinda reminds me of that one time, I think it was Fox news or BBC, where they thought a video from ARMA II was from an actual soldier's helmet cam. That shit was funny. Like the others said though, this shit's easy to verify.

Chessrook44:So does this say more about the realism of video game graphics, or the stupidity of news stations?

The latter I'd say. Or one could go a step further and point out that these people have a disturbing lack of capability in separating between reality and fiction if these kinds of stories are anything to go by. Either way this gives me more fuel to use when I poke fun at my danish friend.

its not lazy reporting or a lack of journalistic integrity it was a simple mistake brought on by the fact most news services now dont actually have dedicated research services to do fact checking, etc thanks to the net. people make mistakes and sometimes they just slip through when people arent familiar with thing or even if they are busy or tired. in this case its just a stock image they needed and not something specific so i can see why they didnt do any checking on it

That would make sight-seeing in Damascus a whole new experience - randomly walking down a side-street when someone dressed in white jumps headlong into a cart of hay off a very high up perch... only to keeps going and plow straight out the bottom, or walking through the market and seeing a similarly dressed person push people out of the way, stumble, and then pick themselves up and keep on going, followed closely by a troop of angry guardsmen, in a manner somewhat akin to Benny Hill; aah yes, I hear Syria is lovely this time of year...

Legion:What is sad is this kind of thing isn't even that rare. The two major British broadcasters have each done something similar, as well as many major US news networks.

I mean seriously, it takes two minutes to verify this kind of thing and make sure the images used are legitimate, how hard can it be to have some journalistic integrity.

want to hear something funny?

Fox news ran a story about violent videogames, shocking I know, but the lady was going on and on about how players can kill mass numbers of virtual people and help train them to commit real life acts of violence.

the funny part? the video that was playing while she was talking was of a player using his car to move the van from that one mission in GTA III.

no shooting, no killing, just trying to force the AI into a better path.

so it isn't just pictures, evidently Youtube can be a bitch to use for Journalists.